The educated housewife has three things going for her: a house, a husband and a brain. Now on a literal level what does this really mean? The house is in his name, the husband was never really devoted in the first place and the brain can think only of those things which make other people happy. At first glance this seems all too depressing but as we look closer it is an invitation to blissful ignorance.
In the morning we awake to make the beds and clean the dishes, all the while our minds drift from pleasant past memories to wistful, wishful fantasies of perfect afternoons and champagne evenings. We are not at all bothered or affected by the lack of purpose because we exist in the brilliant minds that our educations created. Preparing the dinner for six, we are not mentally recreating the stimulating thesis from our Shakespeare seminar, we are contemplating the gastronomical properties of the food before us. We ARE fortunate souls with the ability to give our families the love and care that sustains their very essence of being, even if that means bypassing those needs of our own. Within these domesticated walls we clean our house as we clean our mind. We are the vehicle by which our families secure their future. We are the backbone upon which the household's flesh drapes. At the end of the day when the people in our life have been challenged, entertained and mentally exhausted, we plump their pillows and rub their weary temples. Our backs bend over their fulfilled minds and souls and we thank the Lord for another day of doing our best. We lay our heads down and remember when we were once there; in a pile, under the covers of our mother's home.
When it's time to be an adult, we sit with hands crossed in our lap, amazed and tickled pink by all the amusing and overtly ostentatious behaviors of our husband=s associates. We are told stories about our spouse that we would have never guessed and then looked at askew for not having the knowledge that everyone else in the room possess. We are considered "quaint" and "devoted" for not eagerly pursuing that which our education's prepared us. We throw our heads back in innocent defiance and declare our penchant for homemaking all that completes us.
In the cold car home, as our husbands regurgitate the evening's events, as if the first round wasn't painful enough, we utter a brittle and inhuman laugh to their amusement. "What, darling, didn't you enjoy the evening?" If we say no it is our own pathetic inability to acclimate to the outside world, if we say yes, we are denying ourselves the right to be heard, and our silence betrays our education. Their silence betrays their wife.
After all the devoted neglect of one's self. After years of scrubbing and baking and preparing for guests; the checking account is closed, the locks changed and the education no longer relevant. The title of wife no longer applies and the house belongs to some one else. The education is in the mind of the beholder but she left yesterday to look for her life.
